From the NYLCV’s ecopolitics daily:
Next spring, 490 acres of polluted mud will be dredged out of a stretch of the Hudson River so toxic that fish are considered unfit for consumption, according to the Buffalo Times.
To kick off the six-year project, General Electric is building a wharf, processing facility, and rail yard to remove […]
Category Archive for 'Health'
PlaNYC Progress Report 2008
Posted in Climate Change, Education, Energy, Green Building, Health, Livable Streets, Politics, Transportation, Urban Environment, Waste, Water on Apr 22nd, 2008
From the Mayor’s Office:
MAYOR BLOOMBERG ANNOUNCES UPDATE ON PLANYC INITIATIVES AND ISSUES THE 2008 PLANYC PROGRESS REPORT
Detailed […]
How To Get To A Million New Trees
Posted in Health, Lifestyle, Nature, Parks and Open Space on Mar 28th, 2008
Photo: Department of City Planning
This is as good a way as any to start. From the Times’ City Room blog:
I think that I shall never see a zoning text amendment lovely as a tree. But the new Section 26-41 of the Zoning Resolution, which was approved on Monday by the City Planning Commission, no […]
Your Daily Congestion Pricing Update
Posted in Health, Livable Streets, Transportation on Mar 24th, 2008
Image from Transportation Alternatives ad [pdf]
I swear, this reblog isn’t all CP all the time. It’s just a particularly live period for this vital bit of public health-mass transit-climate change-energy-local economy-livable streets legislation. Here’s what happening right now.
Streetsblog (of course) had blogger Ben Fried inside the City Council public hearings today.
At the […]
Newtown Creek to get a little bit of a facelift (emphasis on little)
Posted in Health, Parks and Open Space, Politics, Waste, Water on Mar 24th, 2008
Newtown Creek is one of NYC’s dirtiest little secrets. By now, most folks know about the enormous oil spill that still sits stagnant, but if you need a recap, this Mother Jones article from last fall is a great start.
Well there’s some (a little) good news on the Newtown front. There are […]
City Council Still Big Hurdle For Congestion Pricing
Posted in Climate Change, Health, Livable Streets, Transportation on Mar 10th, 2008
We don’t make secret our support of congestion pricing. Not do we keep quiet our frustration with local politicians who fail to see the bigger picture. It was with some dismay, then, that we read the results of this Times survey late last week, showing the Bloomberg and CP supporters have […]
Time to Take Action on Congestion Pricing
Posted in Climate Change, Health, Livable Streets, Transportation on Feb 28th, 2008
I’m going to assume that folks here are already pretty well aware of how important congestion pricing is for our city–for the health of New Yorkers, for the ease and cost of our commutes, for the city’s economic well-being, and for helping to cut NYC’s auto-born carbon emissions. (If you’re looking for primer on […]
Pint-Sized Parks Make Safer Streets and Cleaner Rivers
Posted in Health, Livable Streets, Water on Feb 15th, 2008
The Greenstreet at 110th and Amsterdam helps keep sewage out of city rivers and features a beefed-up, traffic-calming "blockbuster."
It rained yesterday, sending stormwater streaming down New York City streets and through sewer grates. The runoff mixed with wastewater in the system and overloaded treatment facilities, causing raw sewage to spill into the city’s waterways.
Sound like an ecological disaster? It can be triggered by as little as one tenth of an inch of rainfall in one hour. Called Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO), this toxic broth also contains chemicals leached from roofs and pavement. 27 billion gallons of CSO pour into city rivers and bays every year. Until recently, there was no concerted effort to prevent it.
One of the more unsung PlaNYC initiatives aims to drastically reduce CSO, in part by managing streets more wisely. Certain traffic calming measures, it turns out, can not only make streets more ped-friendly, but also help make the city’s rivers clean enough to swim in. To accomplish this, PlaNYC calls for retooling the Parks Department’s Greenstreets program, and we are starting to see the results.
At their best, Greenstreets — the pint-sized green spaces that Parks began planting in 1996 — have served as modest traffic-calming measures, displacing asphalt with patches of greenery that send cues to slow down. The new breed goes a few steps further: They combine advanced stormwater capture techniques with more overt traffic-calming devices, like neckdowns and bulb-outs.
NYC: America’s 20th Greenest City?
Posted in Business, Climate Change, Community, Design, Energy, Environmental Justice, Food, Green Building, Health, Lifestyle, Livable Streets, Parks and Open Space, Politics, Technology, Transportation, Waste, Water on Feb 13th, 2008
Popular Science ranks the country’s 50 Greenest Cities in its latest issue and New York comes in at a respectable #20, despite being beaten out by Boston and Chicago. The magazine used raw data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Geographic Society’s Green Guide, which collected government statics and survey data across 30 different sustainability categories. Pop Sci then distributed these statistics across four broad categories: electricity, transportation, green living, and recycling and green perspective. Cities earned points for items such as their number of LEED-certified buildings, how much energy they draw from renewable sources, how many commuters use public transportation or carpool, and how much land they devote to public green space.
Says NRDC:
The New York City Council passed legislation today to tackle the sewage overflowproblem in the City’s overburdened sewer system. The legislation advances the implementation of green design elements, which mimic nature’s own filtering systems, into the City’s existing streets, parks, and other public spaces and into existing and new development projects.
By adopting ‘green infrastructure’ […]